Field
The disclosure of the present specification relates to information processing for associating supplementary information with a medical image.
Description of the Related Art
In the medical field, a medical image obtained by imaging by employing various methods such as CT and MRI is used for making a diagnosis. In a diagnosis using the medical image, in order that the diagnosis is performed while information that is not directly represented in the image is also taken into account. For example, a doctor may also appropriately check imaging information related to the medical image in addition to the medical image. U.S. Patent Application Publication 2002/0122578 proposes that a determination is made as to whether to generate character string data in accordance with an imaging condition, and the character string data is automatically arranged to eliminate the burden of manually arranging the character string data for each imaging operation.
In the diagnosis, a follow-up observation for observing the same objective over time is performed to understand the effects of surgery or medication, or the like. In the follow-up observation, due to the reason that a plurality of medical images of similar regions which are obtained from similar directions by employing similar imaging methods are used in many cases, for example, there is a particularly high need to associate information indicating the period that has elapsed between a reference time such as the date of the surgery or medication and the image and check the image in accordance with the elapsed period. However, according to the above-described technology, the information concerning the follow-up observation is not associated with the medical image.